April 5, 2023: NeMLA Reflections: Jennie Snow on Eric Nguyen and Homelands

[A coupleweekends back I was in Niagara Falls for the 54th annual NortheastModern Language Association Convention. Longtime readers will know well howmuch I loveNeMLA, the organization and the convention alike, and this year was noexception. So as usual, here are a handful of reflections on a great NeMLAconvention!]

One of thebest parts of the last year has been working with my newest Fitchburg State EnglishStudies colleague, JennieSnow (whom I helped hire last year, and yes I am patting myself on the backfor that excellent choice). I’ve thus heard Jennie talk about her work in manycontexts, but hadn’t had the chance to hear a scholarly paper/talk of hers—untilNeMLA, that is, where she chaired the panel that featured Toshiaki Komura’spaper (about which I wrote yesterday) but on which she also presented her ownwork. And a phenomenal presentation it was, linking Eric Nguyen’s novel ThingsWe Lost to the Water (2021) to the evolving mission of the Departmentof Homeland Security and the many fraught layers to how we define “homelands”(and to the concept of resilience, on which the whole NeMLA conference wasfocused). Jennie’s presentation made me put Nguyen’s novel on one of my Fallsemester syllabi (as the Literature concentration reading in my EnglishStudies Capstone course), and if that isn’t high praise for an academictalk, I don’t know what is!

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, I’d love to hear your reflections too!